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EV1Servers.Net's CEO Regrets SCO Deal
spafbnerf writes "Everyone Internet's CEO Robert Marsh, when asked his feelings about the SCO deal almost a month ago responds: 'Would I do it again? No. I'll go on the record as saying that,' Marsh said. 'I certainly know a lot more today than I knew a month ago, in a lot of respects.'"
I personally think that people are too hard on him anyways. Its not like he is trying to perpetuate SCO's attack on the world, he was just trying to protect his company and his customers, thats decent to me.
snowulf.com
SCO is in the business of making fools out of people. Marsh was convinced that if he didn't do this deal, his company would be sued by SCO. He made the decision that signing the deal would be better for his company, but he didn't quite realize what the fallout from the deal would be. Now that he's seen the outcome of his decision, he admits he would have chosen the other path.
Yup, admirable; not at least because of this:
The big loser in this matter may be SCO, said Dion Cornett, an analyst with Decatur Jones Equity Partners LLC, an equity research firm based in Chicago. Having their first publicly announced customer express second thoughts over the deal so soon after its announcement may make it difficult for SCO to sign up other customers, he said.
Finally something positive concerning SCO on slashdot!
I hear there's rumors on the Slashdots
There is site churn because most people that need web hosting have no freakin idea what they want or how the technology works. There's always someone else that will come along and promise them everything to get them to switch to their service. Churn is normal.
Steve's Computer Service, Hobbs, NM
The suit, brought by Texas-based C I Host, is with respect to a forum post containing "allegedly derogatory information" about them. It's obviously a ridiculous move from C I Host, but nonetheless, EV1 stood their ground rather than accepting the agressor's demands and settling out-of-court. That's standing up for something that he believes to be right regardless of cost -- not the cowardice you accuse him of.
Any lawsuit that SCO files against his company will have to wait until the suit with IBM is done, and the actual ownership of Linux IP has been decided in court. Even if SCO does file suit, the judge in the case would probably put it on hold until the IBM suit is done.
If it is found that SCO does not hold any rights to the Linux kernel, then the contract that EV1Servers entered into with SCO is invalid. I'm sure that EV1Servers would also have the right to file suit against SCO, for defrauding the company.
You need to restart your computer. Hold down the Power button for several seconds or press the Restart button.
Here's my principles, as they apply to this situation: My first duty is to select a reliable, competitive hosting company. All other things being equal, EV1's funding SCO would have disqualified them before I made the selection. My time's too valuable to play morality cop ex-post-facto for suppliers who are otherwise satisfactory. SCO's going to lose anyway, because nobody who sues IBM wins, even if they win.
Everybody's a libertarian 'till their neighbour's becomes a crack house.
The problem with the decision is that, since SCO actively employs contracts as weapons to use against their customers, any protection given by such contracts is illusory. Effectively, contracts with SCO protect their rights and remove yours. Previous experience would have indicated this with not much research. SCO has sued their customers more consistently and with greater effect than non-customers; being their customer is probably a guarantee of a suit, while not being a customer only leaves them with a chance of being sued. Even if not buying the licences were guaranteed to lead to a suit, the risk isn't much worse than the risks of being their customer, and your ability to defend against the suits is greater as a non-customer than a customer. If I have to fight SCO, I'd rather fight with all of my weapons intact than be their "buddy" only to be caught suprised and defenseless when they stab me in the back.
The only legitimate business question is whether choosing to buy SCO's "licences" would subject EV1 to more risk (both from SCO's use of contracts and from angry users) than being sued by SCO (and the consequent loss of users and gain in competitors' FUD) would. I don't know the answer to that.
I'm glad that Mr. Marsh admitted it was a mistake to sign on with SCO, but it would have been better had he (or the company's lawyers and businesspeople) thought this over some more before he did it.
I know that this is slashdot, but I would like to substantiate my statements. Otherwise, I would be doing nothing but rumormongering, and I do have evidence to back my claims.
I believe that it's common knowledge that SCO's disputes with IBM and Novell both hinge largely upon the various contracts between the parties. In fact, you can read the claims and counter claims in both cases at Groklaw. What many don't seem to realize that both DaimlerChrystler and Autozone had contractual relations with SCO. This only goes to show you that SCO apparently is unwilling to try any case at this juncture which rests only upon the merits of their IP claims...
Speaking of which, you can find corroboration here on Groklaw, because I do not expect you to just take my word for it.
Greg Sizemore(RIP) was the brains behind EV1Servers/Rackshack. Greg passed away last Fall and I'm sure there hasnt been much innovative growth or change on the web-hosting side of EV1.
I'm sure the deal with SCO would have never gone down had Greg still been there. EV1Servers was run by Sizemore with a hands-off, "you know what you're doing" approach from the administration. They trusted Greg and let him steer the web-hosting department's operations from a technically sound position.
After Greg's death, I'm sure Marsh thought he should muttle in EV1Servers affairs and try to be a hero. Too bad he hasn't a clue about the web-hosting business or how Greg managed things.
(emphasis added)
This clearly supports the claims made by parent.
That's retarded, they stopped showing it when they opened the new datacenter and came out with new packages, which are in the new datacenter ONLY, how can that be related to cancellations in anyway?
Why didn't you take your business elsewhere when you found out this was an MS shop? Didn't you do your research before you chose a hosting solution?
They provide both Windows and Linux hosting, and supposedly they do pretty well at both.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
They used to publish the number of servers because their old data center had limited power and their new data center was not finished; the number let customers know which servers they could buy (since their buy process is so tediously long).
With the launch of their new data center, they probably have thousands of new servers; enough that it's really irrelevant how many are available.
I'm not new here, but I find more misrepresentations of truths here than on any SCO press release.